


plumes

by pseudocitrus



Category: Tokyo Ghoul, Tokyo Ghoul:re
Genre: F/M, Gap Filler, Smoking, ayahina
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 01:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5724508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudocitrus/pseuds/pseudocitrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things can’t be helped. She’ll be dead within the week.</p>
            </blockquote>





	plumes

**Author's Note:**

> i started writing this to fill an “ayahina + ayurnamat” prompt and then couldn’t actually find this prompt in my inbox hahaha ~/////~ so…so.
> 
> ayurnamat is “the philosophy that there is no point in worrying about events that cannot be changed.” i hope you all are having a good day :)

Some things can’t be helped.

“Just don’t be a weakling like my stupid sister,” Ayato tells her, when she asks, and Hinami’s brows furrow. As he turns, he hears her mumble something, and he whirls back around to face her.

“Did you say something to me?”

His voice is sharp. Hinami stiffens.

“N-no,” she replies, and then she purses her lips, and sucks in a breath, and straightens.

“Yeah, I did say something,” she says. “I said that Onee-chan isn’t weak.”

Ayato’s mouth thins. “What do you know?”

“I know a lot! I — I know more about her than you,” she says, and for some reason this makes Ayato’s fist clench. “Onee-chan fed me and took care of me and fought for me and —”

“Yeah, well, if she’s so strong, then where is she now?” Ayato demands. “If your precious Onee-chan is so protective and powerful and good to you, then why are you here?”

Hinami’s mouth shuts. Her eyes begin to water.

“That’s what I thought,” Ayato laughs, and stalks off.

Some things can’t be helped. She’ll be dead within the week.

:::

Well. Maybe two weeks.

One thing he’ll give her — she learns fast. She spends her first couple days trailing Eto, and after that he spots her wandering around the compound on her own. She quietly greets everyone she passes, even him, though he often just huffs back at her and keeps moving.

He never catches her crying outright, but her eyes are always red, and she always smells like cigarette smoke. Probably from clinging to every ghoul in Aogiri for handouts before they get bored of her and shoo her off. Few ghouls like to hunt with partners, and those that do select people that have way more going for them that being a tiny, weak girl that’s never hunted in her life.

Probably, Ayato tells himself, Aneki and the one-eyed freak ditched her for similar reasons. What other reason for Hinami’s dumb stories about stalking both of them? She’s definitely hiding something.

It’s this thought that rises up in his mind when, after hunting one night, he discovers her silhouette in his usual spot high above their current HQ. He hangs back, glad that the wind is blowing in a way that will hide him from her ridiculous nose and ears. He creeps, and has a sudden memory of how Aneki used to sneak up on him too, and dump worms inside his shirt.

Stupid fucking Aneki.

Then again, that was really just when they were babies. It’s not like she ever did that stuff later. Later, if Aneki ever had a surprise for him, it was always food.

Though, food usually came with a lecture or two. Ayato, don’t do this. Ayato, don’t do that.

_Ayato, look! I brought you your favorite —_

There’s a snap.

Ayato blinks, and then squints. There’s another _snap_ — and this time, a flicker. A tiny orange light. Ayato stares in disbelief as Hinami cups her hands and leans.

She can’t be — she can’t _actually_ be —?

 _She is._ Hinami leans back, inhaling, and before he knows it, he is out of his hiding spot, and racing, and snatching the cigarette out of her mouth.

“What are you _doing_?” he demands, and Hinami gasps.

“A-Ayato-kun — where did you —”

“Are you an _idiot_?” Ayato demands. “What’s the matter with you? Didn’t anyone ever tell you this can _kill_ you?”

He slams it onto the ground and screws his boot heel into the thing until it’s nothing more than ashes. Hinami looks on the verge of protest, but remains silent as Ayato scuffs the ashes off the roof.

“Idiot,” Ayato grumbles. “Aneki would _never_ shut up about this stupid shit. Are you deaf or something? Or did she just not bother with you?”

“One or two won’t hurt you,” Hinami mumbles. “My father was a doctor. He used to do it when he was feeling…well, he used to do it, and he was okay.” To Ayato’s disbelief, she is reaching into her cape again, and withdrawing a beaten-up box.

“What the hell? You have _more_?”

She’s already sticking another cigarette in her mouth. It bobs as she speaks. “If you don’t like it, go away.”

He stares as she lights it and leans back, fingers posed over her face in a V around the thing like a fucking pro.

So she’s got some gall. Who would have thought? He is reappraising her, but she isn’t done yet.

“You can have one too,” she tells him. She holds a cigarette out to him. For once, her expression is — not teary and begging. Her eyes are — clear. Focused. Challenging.

Ayato feels his face warm and stares at the cigarette.

_“Promise me you won’t, Ayato.”_

He takes the cigarette and puts it in his mouth and leans toward the lighter she holds up for him. The cigarette teeters in and out of the flame before he can figure out how best to hold it. The takes way longer to light than he thought it would. When it lights, Ayato takes a quick, fake breath, and then removes the cigarette from his mouth and reclines against the wall with his arm casually draped on his knee. He exhales with a light cough, glad that the air is cold enough that it condenses into a kind of smoke anyway.

After that, they sit together silently for a while.

Which feels a little weird, honestly. Now that it’s just the two of them, he is hyper aware of the fact that she is the closest person to his age that he’s interacted with in a while. For some reason, this feels way more pertinent than he ever thought it would be.

There’s a noise — a loud rumbling, one that Ayato is familiar with from too many nights of poor hunting way back when. Ayato glances over in time to see Hinami grimace and fold her legs tight up to smother her stomach. In this position, her knees are sort of pushing up against her —

“Was Onee-chan really against it?” she asks.

“H-huh? Oh,” Ayato says, “um, yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean…who?”

“Onee-chan and smoking,” Hinami supplies, and Ayato coughs.

“Uh, right, yeah. Yeah, she used to say stuff like…there was enough stuff in the world trying to kill us.”

Hinami looks down. “I guess she would be pretty mad at me, then.”

She flicks the ash off the end of her cigarette, and Ayato hurriedly does the same.

Silence again, broken only another rumbling noise.

“I really miss Onee-chan a lot,” Hinami mutters. “I haven’t seen her in a long time.”

Ayato says nothing, which Hinami seems to take as a cue to continue talking, a lot.

Onee-chan giving Hinami reading materials and searching after her to save Hinami from her own mistakes. Onee-chan cutting Hinami’s hair. Onee-chan defeating Gourmet. (“Really?” he says, despite himself, and Hinami nods excitedly.) Onee-chan determined to save Kaneki from Aogiri. Onee-chan making a smile as Hinami waved goodbye.

As Hinami continues, her voice gets quieter, shreds up until he has to strain to hear it through the whistle of the wind. 

Onee-chan this. Onee-chan that. It’s so fucking weird that she’s talking about Aneki like this. Even though they’re strangers, it feels suddenly like she’s some kind of old next-door neighbor. She starts going on about how Onee-chan was always awake studying past the time Hinami falls asleep, and always awake before Hinami too, and Ayato snorts.

“Awake already with three cups of coffee, right?” he says. Hinami blinks and straightens.

“Y-yeah! One for me, and the other two —”

“For herself.” Ayato rolls his eyes. “She always drank too much of that when she was stressed. That’s probably how that old man won her over.”

He says it bitterly, but Hinami starts laughing.

“I — I can’t believe you know that!”

“Why the hell wouldn’t I? I’m her actual brother,” he snaps, and Hinami laughs, even louder. She rubs a knuckle against the corner of her eye.

“Yeah,” she says, smiling at the ground, “you really are,” and Ayato swallows and looks away again.

Eventually, her laughter fades. She leans back, mood dimming.

“I hope she’s okay,” she murmurs, and Ayato purses his lips. No use telling her that he’s searched and hasn’t found any sign of her.

“If she isn’t,” he says, “there’s not much that can be done about it.”

“Yeah…I…guess not.” Seeing Hinami drag a breath from her cigarette, Ayato brings his own cigarette close to his mouth again, and inhales. Hinami’s breath billows visibly into the air as she sighs. “If Onee-chan is weak, then I don’t know how I could ever be strong.”

Silence again, broken only by the sound of Ayato clearing his throat.

“Well, you’re doing better than her already,” Ayato tells her, for reasons completely unknown to him. He looks out and across the lights of HQ, flicking more ash off the cigarette. “Only the strong can survive in Aogiri, and you’ve been here over a week already. Maybe you’ll even make two weeks.”

She is looking at him, and he looks away, determinedly. He flicks at the cigarette again, but this time, ash falls onto his pants, and Ayato grumbles and stands, brushing it off and dropping the cigarette onto the ground like he’s done with it. He stamps it out, twisting his heel twice, and kicks the remains off the roof before Hinami can see clearly how much of it was left.

Some things can’t be helped.

“I’m hungry,” he announces. “Can you hear anything nearby that we can hunt?”

She seems startled by the question. “Me? I…um, I…yeah, of course. I mean, I, um, I could.”

"Good,” he says, and when she still doesn’t get up, he spreads his arms. “Well? Get up already!”

“R-right!” Hinami quickly fumbles to her feet, and once there, sways, just a little; without thinking, he steadies her, and she bows her head a bit, in thanks. When her face lifts again, she is smiling, faintly.

Her cigarette isn’t finished. But, she drops it on the ground, and stamps it out, twisting her heel twice.


End file.
